Amsterdam man accused of stalking, violently threatening trans influencer Jae Gottlieb
Jae Gottlieb, a trans influencer who livestreams her daily life on TikTok, filed a lawsuit against an Amsterdam resident, accusing him of cyberstalking her for nearly a year. The lawsuit names M. B., a student in Amsterdam, saying he subjected Gottlieb to a relentless campaign of doxxing, swatting, and increasingly graphic death threats while using various pseudonyms. Gottlieb pressed charges with the New York Police Department, saying they could soon contact their counterparts in Amsterdam to investigate.
"This feels like my last resort. I don't know what else to do," the 27-year-old said from her downtown Manhattan home. "I literally just want him to stop, and I want him to be held responsible."
The harassment started in April 2023, Gottlieb told NL Times. A user named “Miss Flop” started leaving comments under Gottlieb's TikTok livestreams, writing disconcerting statements, like he was watching her and he would track her down. A month later, Miss Flop started posting transphobic videos targeting Gottlieb on Instagram.
That’s also when the death threats began. “I really want to make her life suffer; she’s pretty, but I want to make her life suffer,” B. said under the pseudonym, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit states the individual’s full name, which NL Times has redacted as his age is unknown.
“I’m going to fucking kill Jae.” The comments quickly became even more graphic. “Don’t you guys want to be [Gottlieb]; I want to fucking skin [Gottlieb] and rip his fucking face off and put it on mine. Like I want that fucking botox.”
Miss Flop also speculated about using his knife to stab Gottlieb, said he would fly to New York to kill her “in her fucking stinking marble palace,” and threatened to rape her. “I’m going to slit her fucking eyeballs, I’m going to choke that bitch,” he allegedly said.
According to the lawsuit, all the above threats happened on the same day - on or around May 17 last year. More threats followed in the following days, including: “I really can’t like wait to throw like acid in the face of [Gottlieb], I might like to throw acid in her face.”
Gottlieb said that she cannot comprehend how someone could write such threats, and added she did nothing to provoke such a response. "That's the crazy thing. I don't understand what he's doing this for."
During his own daily livestreams, Miss Flop claimed he was harassing Gottlieb because she was “blackmailing him” for a “universe” - a gift users can give on TikTok, and one of the two ways to pay live streamers on the social media platform. Gottlieb said the accusation was absolutely untrue.
"He just doesn't stop," Gottlieb said with a somewhat discouraged tone. "I'm a strong person mentally. I'm afraid another person would break."
Gottlieb notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States of the situation, as the threats were being made by an unknown person in an unknown location. It would be months before her fans would make the connection that the Amsterdam man was involved.
After Gottlieb was sent pornographic material involving children, she went to the FBI’s office in person to ask them for help in removing child pornography from her phone. She also asked the social media platforms he used to ban him. And yet, the relentless harassment continued.
In June, Miss Flop found Gottlieb's home address and escalated to doxxing - posting Gottlieb's address and contact details online so that others could harass her, too. In August, he sent a photo of Gottlieb in a sexual act to her parents, grandparents, friends and other relatives, and he then also posted it on Reddit.
Gottlieb told NL Times she does not hide the fact that she produces her own adult content on OnlyFans, but she does not promote it on TikTok either. The photo was pulled from her OnlyFans account and used in a way to shame her. Gottlieb said it did not work. "I have the best support system ever. They're very involved in the LGBTQ community."
In November, Gottlieb said the harassment turned to swatting, where the offender called emergency services to her address under false pretences. According to the lawsuit, for at least a week, police, firefighters, paramedics, and child protective services showed up at Gottlieb's home as many as 15 times a day. In one such call, the man allegedly told the local child welfare agency that Gottlieb was sexually abusing a 6-year-old child in her apartment, sparking a criminal investigation examining the influencer.
It was around this time that Gottlieb and her followers scoured Miss Flop’s posts for indications of who he might be. Miss Flop would use their time on a livestream to go walking around outside in a neighborhood viewers identified as the Buitenveldert neighborhood in Amsterdam. This matched up with a what someone might see when looking out of the window of a room in a student housing facility in the area.
"It's like he wanted to get caught, or he was getting off on people trying to find him," Gottlieb concluded. Then, Miss Flop made another mistake. He accidentally showed the login screen on his laptop, which clearly showed a first and last name that matched the online profile of an individual living in Buitenveldert.
The TikTok influencer said the threats and harassment are still happening. Before contacting NL Times, she told the Daily Beast, “I’m still going through it,” adding, “It’s not even close to an end. I’ve been dealing with this for a year. It’s an absolute nightmare.” She hopes the lawsuit will stop the attacks. “I’m trying to take this fucker down, seriously."
Gottlieb is seeking unspecified compensation for “damage to her reputation, fear of physical injuries, severe emotional distress, death threats, embarrassment, and humiliation.” She said she has suffered damage in excess of 75,000 dollars, an amount that made it possible to file the case in a U.S. Federal Court. The civil lawsuit was filed on March 6.
Getting the matter investigated as a criminal case was more complicated. Although death threats, doxxing, inciting violence, and hate speech are all crimes according to Dutch law, Dutch police only take statements from victims who were in the Netherlands at the time a crime took place.
That is because authorities in the Netherlands consider the location of a victim to be the first jurisdiction, and thus where a criminal investigation should begin, a spokesperson for the Amsterdam police told NL Times. This can make matters more complex for victims, as something considered a crime in the Netherlands might not be handled in a similar manner elsewhere.
A police spokesperson would not say if the suspect identified by Gottlieb is currently under an investigation in the Netherlands, citing privacy concerns. The office said they do take such cases seriously. A situation such as Gottlieb’s means police in New York, or another responsible agency in the United States, would need to contact Dutch police to move forward with an investigation.
In the meantime, Gottlieb said she is trying to keep the focus on her growing online career. "For so long, I was just saying, 'Leave me alone.'" She added, "Now, I'm really trying to put all of my attention on the positive things."
Jae Gottlieb has been active on TikTok for some time, generating over 41.3 million views on the social media platform, and almost 138,000 followers. She has posted roughly 1,800 videos in total, for an average of approximately 24,000 views per clip, and her videos are typically commented on a few dozen times.
